Monotheism Quotes - Page 2

• A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Children, Believe

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• At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.

  Gore Vidal

  Hate, Men, Sky

  "America First? America Last? America at Last?". Lowell Lecture, Harvard University, April 20, 1992.

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• Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence.

  George Steiner

  Western Culture, Three, Consciousness

  "In Bluebeard's Castle". Book by George Steiner, 1971.

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• Religion has gotten a bad rap for good reasons. Often, there are a lot of people - women, LBGT, and others - you know, hierarchical monotheism has been a real source of a type of oppression.

  Van Jones

  Real, Rap, People

  Source: pen.org

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• Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Sick, Lines, Quiet

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.57, Basic Books

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• What we have been raised to think of as inevitable - division and hierarchy, monotheism and nation states - actually accounts for less than 10 percent of human history.

  Gloria Steinem

  Thinking, Hierarchy, Division

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• Communication media enabled collective action on new scales, at new rates, among new groups of people, multiplied the power available to civilizations and enabled new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of info-nomads.

  Howard Rheingold

  Smart, Communication, Media

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• For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Suffering, Special, Atheism

  "The Faith of a Heretic". Book by Walter Kaufmann, ch. 6, 1961.

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• Islam is at once the most and the least interesting of the world's monotheisms. It builds upon its primitive Jewish and Christian predecessors, selecting a chunk here and a shard there, and thus if these fall, it partly falls also.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Christian, Fall, Interesting

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.90, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.

  Karen Armstrong

  Israel, Expression, Worship

  "Karen Armstrong Builds A 'Case For God'". Interview with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. September 21, 2009.

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• Only a country that is based upon an extremely primitive religion, which is Christianity, I am a devoted enemy of monotheism in all of its forms, could have come with a categorizing of people as one thing or the other.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, People, Enemy

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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• It's very clear from Biblical history and Jewish history that Jewish monotheism wasn't developed in an instant, that it became gradually the accepted norm. But undoubtedly, Jewish ancestors were polytheists.

  Robert Winston

  Biblical, Accepted, Jewish History

  "Epiphanies: Lord Robert Winston". "The Spirit of Things" with Rachael Kohn, www.abc.net.au. June 4, 2006.

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• I think [rock'n'roll] essence is what made it good and has a lot in common with what originally made monotheism good - it's against everything that is fixed, all the social structures that you can't go past.

  Ezra Furman

  Thinking, Past, Rocks

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced . . . can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam.

  Carlton J. H. Hayes

  Teaching, Sacrifice, Islam

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